Thursday the 5th of May 2005 is a day that will definitely be remembered by many. It is a day that will go down into the history of the many Mercator CIDs, but the one that will be thought of as the grand finale.

As the semester draws to a close, what could have ended it better but the educative, hilarious and informative C.I.D. which was hosted by a group of students representing all the Chinese Speaking Countries?

Klaus Boenke officially graced the occasion by mildly bragging about his own visits to Shanghai and Beijing. Jeff, despite being sick put on a spectacular Kung-Fu performance which had the audience in awe for a couple of minutes.

The history of China was discussed in a great detail as it covered the many dynasties that the country has had over the past 5000 years. The Chinese history dates way back to 2200-1750 BC under Xia and is believed to have originated from the Yellow River. The Chinese are a great people who were the first to invent paper while many of the countries in the West were still writing on stone. They are also the first to have introduced the paper currency in the years 960-1279 BC.

The audience listened intently as the Nanjing Massacre was described in which 300,000 Chinese people were killed and more than 20,000 women raped. All in all 35,000,000 Chinese people died at the hands of the Japanese. Despite that horrifying news hope was highlighted with the two great leaders Mao and Deng. Mao was responsible for China’s independence and Deng’ greatest aim was to make sure that the people’ lives was improved.

Taiwan was then covered by Chin whose presentation was titled M.I.T. (Made in Taiwan). Three of IUBs students come from Taiwan these being Hao-Han, Jeff and Chin. Chin was able to give a complete overview of the past the present and a glimpse into the future of his island which is home to the tallest building in the world.

The story of Chan Gong San introduced Hong Kong, another of the Chinese speaking countries which has a population of about 7.3 million people. Gong San was born in 1954 and got his inspiration from Bruce Lee. Today he has become one of Hollywood’s greatest actors. He is better known as Jackie Chan.

Xingkui, as a professor-doctor then had a small sketch with fellow Mercatorians Marcus and Przemek in which he was able to cover the culture and manners of the Chinese people. One of the highlights in his sketch was that of not opening gifts in front of the giver and also to avoid giving Chinese people a clock as it represents the for seeing of someone dying.

To get the audience participating, a chop stick workshop was done as they tried to prove that their utensils are more effective and efficient than the regular fork and knife. ‘Ni-Hao’ the Chinese way of saying "Hi" was screamed out by the audience and despite it making the language seem easy, it wasn’t long before the audience realized that there was more to the language which is made up of pictographs. Xingkui had a hilarious question and answer session in which the audience had loads of fun trying to interpret the Chinese language. This lightened the mood in the room after all the talk about the Countries history and everyone got involved as they screamed out their choices.

Jiang Liu from Shanghai tried to entice the crowd into travelling there by covering all the key points as to why one would have a great time in Shanghai. He had 4 participating candidates who had been to Shanghai to describe their key points. Two of them were interviewed by a virtual video conference (Stefan and Vivian) and the other two (Luna and Joanna) spoke intensively about their time there.

To end the programme Farah and Xingkui put on a short sketch which started off at Mount Everest and ended in Beijing in 2008. This is where the next Olympics will be held. Despite having a full packed programme, the Chinese speaking students were able to keep the attention of the audience for over 2 hours and at the end of it all, it could be described as a successful event. The great food which had been prepared seemed to have been a mistake at the end of the day as it kept everyone wanting more.

(text by Rosalyn Harrison)